by Maireid Sullivan
2011, updated 2023
Work in progress

"Is any study simpler than Economics? A child could grasp it!"  – Leon Mclaren (1910-1994), School of Economic Science, London

Index

– Part 1
Introduction
- Medieval France
- 1000 - 1400 AD
- Separation of Church and State
- Owning Land "in perpetuity"

– Part 2
1500 - 1600
Protest, Reform, Rebirth: Impacts of the Printing Press
- Meetings of Minds
- Renaissance
- Protestant Reformation: Reviving a 1000 year old argument
- The Pelagian controversy: Free Will vs Original Sin
- Paying for Forgiveness of Sins
- Redefining core Christian beliefs

– Part 3
Mapping the World
- East West fusion follows catastrophe

– Part 4
1600-1800s -The Triumph of Reason
- Awakening Economic Thought
- China's role in European Enlightenment
- Confucius of Europe
- The French Physiocrats - Informed by China
- Origins of Classical Political Economic Theorem
- The Law of Rent Theorem

ENLIGHTENMENT
- 1685-1815: The Age of Enlightenment / Reason
REVOLUTION
- The End of Feudalism via the Single Tax

– Part 5
Late 1800s movement
- Survival of the Fittest

– Part 6
Marxism & Georgism are opposites
- A Stronger form of Capitalism: Progress toward "equality and justice for all"
- Christianity's Missed Opportunity

– Part 7
1900 - 2000
Two Schools of Economic Thought
- Classical Political Economics
- Neo-classical Economics

– Part 8
In the interest of accurate prophecy
- Two historic events
- President Woodrow Wilson's great sorrow

Summary A close study of the development of Classical Political Economic Theorem, (Quesnay, 1758; Smith, 1776; Ricardo, 1809, leading to "Ricardo's Law" aka The Law of Rent theorem), will show that the suppression of that theorem has been the leading cause of our environment, public health, economic, and governmental troubles. – Maireid Sullivan, 2015

Part 1
Introduction
Back to top

Medieval France
Separation of Church and State
Familiarity with the formation of medieval culture–the Middle Ages "feudal system" of politics that shaped daily life across Europe–will provide context for understanding the development of European economic thought:
Georges Duby (1919-1996), professor of the history of medieval societies at the Collège de France, specialised in the social and economic history of the Middle Ages. Professor Duby was an Annales historian - a pioneer of the history of mentalities – the study of what people did, their value systems and how they imagined their world.
His most celebrated books are:
– The Knight, The Lady and The Priest– The Making of Marriage in Medieval Europe (1981/1983), "Duby explains the complicated machinations of the medieval churchman and the paterfamilias". (Introduction shared HERE)
– The Three Orders- Feudal Society Imagined (1982) (Les Trois Ordres ou L’imaginaire du féodalisme)– clergy, nobles, commoners: those who pray, those who fight, and those who work the land.

Recommended reading:
-- French Estates General, 1302-1614, elected representatives of the three estates (clergy, nobility, commoners)
-- Daileader, P. & Whalen, P. (2010), French Historians 1900-2000: New Historical Writing in Twentieth-Century France
-- A. Bernard Knapp, 2009, Archaeology, Annales, and Ethnohistory: time, space, and change, Cambridge University Press (pdf)
-- Theodore Evergates, 1997, The Feudal Imaginary of Georges Duby, Duke University Press (pdf)

Owning Land "in perpetuity"
Professor Duby examined the influence of numerous competing interest groups over the vital period from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, during which time the introduction of formal Separation of Church and State laws gave the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) authority over traditional laws around European family life and spiritual dogma, and the introduction of new laws defining land ownership based on the argument that since the Church is the "body of Christ" it is immortal, therefore, can own land "in perpetuity".

Germanic law defined RCC Canon Law from the 6th to the 12th centuries, until Ivo (Yves) of Chartres (1040-1115), emerged as a forceful advocate and a prolific publicist for ecclesiastical laws with his 1090 appointment to the rank of Bishop of Chartres. "Letters of Ivo of Chartres" were widely circulated in his time. His campaign against the divorce and the re-marriage, in 1092, of King Philip I, King of the Franks from 1060 to 1108, led to the canon law doctrine of marriage, and the first laws on the Separation of Church and State.

German historian Dr. Christof Rolker's "Canon Law and Letters of Ivo of Chartres” (2010) is an analysis of three canonical collections attributed to Ivo: Decretum (c. 1094), Panormia (c.1095), and Tripartita (c. 1093-1095).
Rolker’s Master’s dissertation, submitted to Oxford University in 2002, is available as a free PDF: “Ivo of Chartres' pastoral canon law” Bulletin of medieval canon lawn.s. 25 (2006), 114–145 (27 pages)

Church Monasteries eventually 'held' large tracts of land across Europe and England, which were worked by farmers with a life interest only, compared with the Viking Age (793–1066AD), aka the North Sea Empire, which introduced Danelaw, where land was owned by individuals and could be bought, sold and inherited. Feudal land tenure was extended to the North Atlantic Islands by the first English Pope, Hadrian IV, aka Adrian IV, (1154-1159) and his close adviser, John of Salisbury.

According to Irish classical scholar, UCD Professor Maurice Sheehy (1975), sometime between November 1155 and July 1156, "John of Salisbury spent three months with Pope Hadrian at Beneventum, and it was during this visit that he obtained papal approval for the English invasion of Ireland. He describes the event himself:"

[Salisbury] It was at my request that he (the Pope) granted to the illustrious king of England, Henry, the hereditary possession of Ireland, as his letters, still extant, attest: for all islands are reputed to belong by long-established right to the Church of Rome, to which they were granted by Constantine, who established and endowed it.
– Maurice Sheehy, When The Normans Came To Ireland, Mercier Press, Cork 1975, 1998 Ed., p.11). *

* NOTE:
Romans traded with Continental Celts, but never 'invaded' Ireland.

Of particular interest here is Professor Duby's documentation of the consequences of confiscation of land: methods introduced by the expansion of the role of the RCC’s Inquisition (circa 1231) for the suppression of heresy; extending RCC scope to classify traditional and non-Christian beliefs, including traditional healing arts, as heresy and witchcraft. Since women on the Western rim of Europe traditionally held rights to land ownership, an accusation of heresy or witchcraft allowed immediate confiscation of their property, before trial, and without rights to counsel. Countless numbers of men and women were burned at the stake over a period of five long centuries, ending in the 18th century. This time span includes an initial 250 years of concentrated "witch hunts" and land confiscation, and suppression of the lifestyle, laws, and medical practices of traditional Western European cultures.

In a 2011 ABC-Radio National interview, on reappraising "The Middle Ages and the fabrication of tradition", Professor Felice Lifshitz suggests that the clergy were not allowed to marry in order to prevent the 'private' ownership of land. – Felice Lifshitz, (2011), Why the Middle Ages Matter: Medieval Light on Modern Injustice, Routledge.

Protest, Reform, Rebirth
Impacts of the Printing Press
Mass communication emerged across Europe in 1439, when Gutenberg (1400-1468) developed the technology that gave us the printing press which inspired the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Age of Enlightenment, leading to the scientific revolution that brought learning to the masses.

The word is celebrate – not celibate!
(monastic transcribers 'punchline')

“the history of printing begins long before Gutenberg's time."
Who Invented the Printing Press?
By Elizabeth Peterson
February 25, 2014
LiveScience
Excerpts:

Chinese monks and blocks
Nearly 600 years before Gutenberg, Chinese monks were setting ink to paper using a method known as block printing, in which wooden blocks are coated with ink and pressed to sheets of paper. One of the earliest surviving books printed in this fashion — an ancient Buddhist text known as "The Diamond Sutra" — was created in 868 during the Tang (T'ang) Dynasty (618-909) in China. The book, which was sealed inside a cave near the city of Dunhuang, China, for nearly a thousand years before its discovery in 1900, is now housed in the British Library in London. . . . An important advancement to woodblock printing came in the early eleventh century, when a Chinese peasant named Bi Sheng (Pi Sheng) developed the world's first movable type. . .

... Despite early successes with movable type, this method of printing didn't catch on as quickly in Asia as it did in Europe. This lukewarm reception was most likely due to the complexities of Asian writing systems. . . Before the invention of the printing press — sometime between 1440 and 1450 — most European texts were printed using xylography, a form of woodblock printing similar to the Chinese method used to print "The Diamond Sutra" in 868. Manuscripts not printed with woodblocks were painstakingly copied by hand. Both processes were extremely labor intensive and, as a result, books in Europe were very expensive and few could afford to buy them.

But all that changed in the middle of the 15th century, when Johannes Gutenberg established himself as a goldsmith and craftsman in Strasbourg, Germany. . .

Gutenberg printing press
Like Bi Sheng, Wang Chen and Baegun before him, Gutenberg determined that to speed up the printing process, he would need to break the conventional wooden blocks down into their individual components — lower- and upper-case letters, punctuation marks, etc. He cast these movable blocks of letters and symbols out of various metals, including lead, antimony and tin. He also created his own ink using linseed oil and soot — a development that represented a major improvement over the water-based inks used in China. . . Adapting the screw mechanisms found in wine presses, papermakers' presses and linen presses, Gutenberg developed a press perfectly suited for printing.>>> more

The Great “Fake News” Scare of 1530
In his December 2016 essay, Swedish politician Rick Falkvinge examined, with a sense of irony, the consequence of the Roman Catholic Church's loss of control of the mass media of the time
– book production.

Excerpts:
... the prospect of buying one single book would consume an entire family income for four years – or in the $500k to $1M range in today’s value. Gutenberg was convinced his invention would strengthen the Church, as the ability to mass produce books from a single original would eliminate all the small copying errors invariably introduced in the manual book production process. It would therefore, he argued, improve the consistency of Christian bibles. The result was the exact opposite, through mechanisms Gutenberg did not foresee. ... ultimately setting off a century of civil war over the Power of Narrative. The Catholic church went on a rampage and a crusade against this new spread of ideas that would challenge its narrative. >>> more

Meetings of Minds
Compassion, and shame, and grief.

Development of Scholasticism and Humanism follows Greek and Roman intellectual teaching methods across Europe. Out of this intellectual melding, a new cultural movement grew, calling for humanitarian social cohesion based on fair and honest governance: The established order had become ostentatious and pedantic – ritualistic, formal, strict, puritanical, misogynistic – and "intolerant, imperious, and power-hungry," according to leading historian on Celtic culture across Europe, Peter Berresford Ellis.

Renaissance
While the Italian term la rinascita (rebirth) first appeared in writing in the 1550 publication of Giorgio Vasari's (1511-1574) Vite de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori Italiani, aka The Transmission of Sin: the term “Renaissance” wasn't introduced until the 18th and 19th centuries in Germany, England, France, and Italy.

"Bridging" the middle ages and modern-day civilization:

History.com
The Renaissance was a fervent period of European cultural, artistic, political and economic “rebirth” following the Middle Ages. Generally described as taking place from the 14th century to the 17th century, the Renaissance promoted the rediscovery of classical philosophy, literature and art. Some of the greatest thinkers, authors, statesmen, scientists and artists in human history thrived during this era, while global exploration opened up new lands and cultures to European commerce. >>> more

Banking on a Dynasty
The Italian Renaissance led to one of the most important cultural and artistic revolutions in Western history. Across the 14-16th centuries, the legendary banking dynasty, the de Medici family ‘ruled’ as patron of the arts, learning, architecture, and as political influencers.
Cosimo de Medici (1389-1464), Duke of Florence, founded the international Medici Banking empire which became the preferred bank for papal business.
Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici (1449-1492), Lorenzo the Magnificent, Duke of Urbino. The family’s sponsorship of the arts reached its zenith with the political stability achieved under his leadership.
Giulio de Medici (1478-1534), became the head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States: Pope Clement VII (1523-1534).
Catherine de Medici (1519-1589), daughter of Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici and Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne, cousin of Francis I, King of France, became the most influential queen of France as the widow of Henry II (1533-1559). She bore 10 children, including kings Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III. Her policies as regent of France (1560-1574) effectively inflated the French Wars of Religion.
Marie de Médicis (1575-1642), in 1600, was selected as the second wife of Henry IV, who was assassinated in 1610, the day after her coronation. As mother of Louis XIII (1601-1643), she ruled as regent during his minority. In 1617, her infamous political mismanagement led the young king to take power by exiling his mother and executing her followers.

Four references of interest:
- “The Pazzi conspiracy”
- Estates-General, 1614: Encyclopedia
- The Medici Granducal Archive /The Medici Archive Project: WayBackMachine
- The “infertility” of Catherine de Medici & it’s influence on 16th c. France (pdf)

Protestant Reformation: Reviving a 1000 year old argument –
The Pelagian controversy: Free Will vs Original Sin
With the invention of the printing press, translations of Classical texts became more widely available–including the Bible and the writings of Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), "Father of the Roman Catholic Church", whose writings spurred the "Pelagianism controversy" during the first two hundred years of RCC establishment: "Augustine’s impact on the Middle Ages cannot be overestimated."

A letter from Pelagius (413 AD) is relevant as an example of Druidic satire of the highest order at a turning point in history when 'The Law' was used to enforce a new form of 'order' on the Western edges of the known world.

Ancient Greek and Latin classicist, Professor Garry Wills, conveys a sense of the time in Augustine's Hippo: Power Relations (410-417), Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, 7(1), 98-119, 1999:

"When the Visigoth leader Aleric captured the city of Rome in 410, a shock ran through the entire empire. Jerome wrote from Bethlehem: “Rome, capturer of the world, fell captive”. Though Alaric was a Christian (Arian)- taking a Christian (Catholic) city, there was an ominous feeling that the world structure built by pagan Rome was disintegrating. Pagans claimed that Christians had destroyed the greatest human achievement ever contrived. Christians themselves, who had boasted that they saved whatever was good in ancient civilization, lifting to new heights, now suffered a crisis of confidence. … A need for a new discipline and toughness was felt, to which Augustine would respond, showing a dark side to his teachings on the importance of the human will. … and his own attitude toward disorder and dissent was hardening..."

Druidic Celtic scholar, Pelagius (354-420AD) is chiefly remembered for defending the role of Law in cultivating "Personal Sovereignty" as the key to the exercise of "Free Will" while Augustine of Hippo promoted the Manichaean doctrine - the belief that all people are predestined to commit sin as a consequence of Original Sin.
(See Pier Franco Beatrice, (2013), The Transmission of Sin: Augustine and the Pre-Augustinian Sources.)

Pelagius argued that through the exercise of free will, where people's choices were their own, people could be free of sin.

Pelagius is remembered for his insistence on an individuals' capacity to exercise "Free Will" in taking personal responsibility for decisions and choices in the knowledge that we will be held accountable for our choices.

In Pelagius, a Reluctant Heretic, 1988, Brinley R. Rees argued that our actual inheritance from Adam's Original Sin is an example of how misuse of Free Will creates misfortune.

Fragments of the 2nd ecclesiastical trial against Pelagius, held in 415AD, were published in Augustine of Hippo's 417AD report "On The Proceedings Of Pelagius" and are discussed on NewAdvent.
See also Rev. Daniel R. Jennings' trial excerpts:
Synod Of Lydda To Investigate Pelagius' Teachings, 415 AD
and commentary: Defense Of The Freedom Of The Will

Gallic monks supporting Pelagius’ views were branded "Semi-Pelagians" and finally condemned at the Synod of Orange in 529 which accepted Augustine's theology of Original Sin, thus diverging from the Patristic Tradition. Augustine was declared a saint in 1298.

The 'controversy' remained unresolved after the Synod of Whitby (644 AD), bringing an end to the practice of Celtic Christianity. "The Celtic church was considered riddled with 'Pelagian heresy' almost to the end of its days." – P. B. Ellis, The Druids, 1995, p. 184

"Augustine, we might say, does describe a system of communication; only not everything that we call language is this system. And one has to say this in many cases where the question arises 'Is this an appropriate description or not?' The answer is: 'Yes, it is appropriate, but only for this narrowly circumscribed region, not for the whole of what you were claiming to describe.'”
– Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) Section 3, Philosophical investigations, (1958)

Paying for Forgiveness of Sins
Challenging RCC revenue sources:
Commercialization of Church services focused mainly on "absolution" – forgiveness of sins, exemption from punishment (penance) for sins and guarantees of eternal life, including the following:

– Purchase of symbols of faith: relics, rosary beads, medals, statues, candles, holy water.
– Indulgences via penance and purchase of certificates pre-signed by the pope: proving that sins had been pardoned or reducing time in purgatory, or release of dead relatives from purgatory.
– Pilgrimages to places of worship owned by the Church.
– Fees for favours or promotion to positions of authority.
– Fees for baptisms, marriage, and burial on Holy Ground.

Martin Luther, (1483-1546)
The 1517 German 'best-seller' -
“Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences”
by Martin Luther, aka the 95 Theses questioned the morality of RCC charges for the forgiveness of sins and revived earlier challenges to Catholic teachings and practices.

Luther replaced the infallibility of the pope with the infallibility of the written word. But he chose certain passages to emphasize, relying heavily on the wrathful ones of the Old Testament for his conception of the deity, and all but ignored the essence of the Gospels. An avenging Yahweh inspired him more than the merciful, loving Father described by Jesus. – Shlain, The Alphabet Versus The Goddess, 1998, p. 327
(See Study Note #172)

For a comprehensive overview of the life and times of Martin Luther (1483-1546) see the excellent anthology, edited by E. Gordon Rupp and Benjamin Drewery, (1970), “Martin Luther", in the Documents of Modern History series (London 1970), published by Hodder Arnold.

Excerpt
LUTHER’S PUBLIC AND ACADEMIC LIFE, 1509 -1515;
THE THESES OF APRIL 1517, (pages 7-8)
Whatever Luther’s progress and his ups and downs, as private person and as a monk, he became more and more involved in public affairs. He was appointed a Prior and a District Vicar within his own order, a preacher first to his fellow monks, and then an official preacher in the parish church of Wittenberg, a popular audience which became of immense importance for him. He had been brought from Erfurt in 1509 to lecture in the Arts faculty at the new University of Wittenberg, where he now lectured on the Nichomachean Ethics of Aristotle. Somewhere between 1510-12 he went to Rome on business connected with his order, and was affronted the cynical professionalism of the clergy and the worldliness in high places. In 1512, encouraged by his teacher and friend, John Staupitz, he took his D.D., a status which involved defending sacred truth in public. On the retirement of Staupitz, Luther succeeded him as a Professor of Biblical Theology. He now became involved in a university ferment which was European-wide, the tensions between as older scholasticism and the new humanism based on a return to ‘the Bible and the Old Fathers’. This involved Luther in growing antagonism to his old teachers, especially the Nominalists at Erfurt. Alongside university lectures, which were at to be dull, dictated affairs, the regular debates or disputations provided a useful ground for airing new and controversial opinions. In Wittenberg they took place on Fridays, week by week, and at the promotion of students to higher degrees, and on certain festal occasions. Over some of these Luther presided in those years when he was Dean, and one occasion in April 1517 gave rise to a formidable series of Ninety Seven Thesis which were an all out attack on the schoolmen, and especially the Nominalist tradition of Gabriel Biel and of Luther’s own teachers, Trutvetter and Usingen.Luther had by this time something of a reputation for controversy, and we know from his correspondence with his friend John Lang that he had seriously annoyed the Erfurt theologians. But when he sent them copies of the Ninety Nine Theses, and offered to debate them, either in Wittenberg or in Erfurt, there was stony silence. pp. 7-8.

In January 1521, Pope Leo excommunicated Luther and in May, 1521, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V ordered his writings to be burned. Luther went into hiding and spent the next 10 years in reclusion, translating the New Testament into German. The reform movement had grown beyond theological issues, to become a political movement.

Henry VIII (1491-1547) joined the challenge to papal authority, questioning the Catholic Church’s ability to define Christian practice.
On the eve of the English Reformation, in 1529, Bishop Eustace Chapuys, Spanish ambassador and the Holy Roman Empire's Imperial Ambassador to England, noted, "nearly all the people here hate the priests". – BHO: # 232. Eustace Chapueys to the Emperor

Sixteenth century Antwerp (Belgium) was the mercantile hub of Europe, a wealthy cosmopolitan centre of trade from East to West at the time of publication, on 2nd Oct. 1528, of the momentous work of William Tyndale, “The Obedience of the Christian Man" (full title, “The Obedience of the Christen Man, and how Christen rulers ought to govern, wherein also (if thou mark diligently) thou shalt find eyes to perceive the crafty convience of all jugglers”. Tudor historian Claire Ridgway, author of "The Anne Boleyn Collection" (2012), discusses the consequences of the books influence on "Anne Boleyn, William Tyndale and Henry VIII" (2013).

Excerpt:
Although Tyndale ended up being executed as a heretic during Henry VIII’s reign, his book was instrumental in helping Henry VIII see how he could have his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled, while also limiting the power of the papacy in England. The steps Henry VIII took as a result of reading “Obedience” sparked off the English Reformation. However, Tyndale’s message regarding how "God has appointed the kings, princes, and other secular leaders as his representatives on earth" – and kings, therefore, being the highest authority in the land – and his challenge of the Pope's "temporal authority over king and emperor" was just one small part of the book. Other subjects include:

– The supremacy of God’s word over everything else
– The importance of God’s word being made available to the laity in English
– The importance of teaching scripture rather than focusing on ecclesiastical law
– Instructions for how to live and what “obedience” means in daily life
– The abuses of the Church
>>> more

John Calvin, (1509-1564)
French theologian John Calvin, inspired by Luther’s perspective, left France for Switzerland, where he wrote what is considered to be one of the most influential religious works ever written, The Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536). Preaching the centrality of the Scriptures, and accepting Augustine's ideas on Original Sin, Calvin's views empowered French Huguenots, Scottish Presbyterians, English Puritans, Scandinavian Protestants, and American Pilgrims.
(See Paul Helm, 1984, The Anatomy of a Controversy, PDF).

“There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.”
– John Calvin (1509-1564)

In 1538, the French Catholic monarchy issued a General Edict calling for the extermination of 'protestants' aka Huguenots, leading to assassinations, massacres, and more burnings-at-the-stake.

1540, The Jesuit Order
The Catholic Reformation, also known as the Counter-Reformation, is marked by the founding of the Jesuit order in 1540 and, in Northern Italy, from 1545 to 1563, at The Council of Trent, the Jesuits charted the Catholic church's course for the next 400 years: defining doctrinal law and condemning Protestant heresies. Forced implementation of those laws led to cross-border Wars of Religion, from 1562 to 1598: Over 200,000 Huguenots left France, while 3 million people perished.

"The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go." – Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

On Voluntary Servitude: Étienne de la Boétie, (1530-1563)
Étienne de la Boétie's Anti-Dictator: Discourse of Voluntary Servitude was written around 1548 and secretly published in 1576 under the title of Le Contr'un ("The Against-One"). "One" refers to dictatorship.

“in the essay on Voluntary Servitude . . . a glimpse of what friendship could mean to a man whose spirit habitually dwelt on a high plane of integrity. . . .
Between 1560 and 1598 there were many outbreaks of religious war in France. Three brothers were crowned kings of France during this time, Francis II (1559-1560), Charles IX (1560-1574), and Henry III (1574-1589). That all three were ineffective rulers is largely due to the machinations of their mother, Catherine de Medici, who finally contrived the infamous massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1572. It was only after the Bourbon Henry IV abjured his Protestant faith a second time and entered Paris that some semblance of order was gradually restored, eventuating in the famous Edict of Nantes, 1598, that granted freedom of worship in the realm. Such was the period during which the Servitude Volontaire was to play an extraordinary role.”
– Harry Kurz (1942) Introduction to the English translation: Étienne de la Boétie's Discourse of Voluntary Servitude
>>> Full Introduction shared HERE

Redefining core Christian beliefs
The Protestant Reformation became a political movement based on the argument that spiritual salvation is reached through belief and faith alone, and that the Bible, not "papal infallibility" of the Roman Catholic Church, is the central source of religious authority for Christians.

“For it is not for knowledge to enlighten a soul that is dark of itself; nor to make a blind man to see. Her business is not to find a man eyes, but to guide, govern and direct his steps, provided he have sound feet, and straight legs to go upon. Knowledge is an excellent drug, but no drug has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep.” 
– Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

Mapping the world
By the mid-1500s, China had withdrawn from world trade in order to focus on internal border protection. In 1557, Portugal was given permission to ‘rent’ land on Macau in return for help in safeguarding China's coastline against "wokou" pirates. (The History of Ming states: thirty percent of the 16th century wokou were Japanese, seventy percent were ethnic Chinese.)
See also Columbia University's Asia for Educators
Map of the World, from "Theatrum Orbis Terrarum" (Theater of the Whole World)
See an interactive version HERE

Theatrum Orbis Terrarum atlas, 1570, “the first true modern atlas”, consisted of “53 bundled maps of other masters” complied and written by Antwerp-born historian Abraham Ortelius (1527-1598).
See Library of Congress' Ortelius Atlas

Matteo Ricci (1552-1610)
Carrying a copy of Ortelius' map, in 1582, at the age of 30, the Italian Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) travelled to the Portuguese settlement in Macau, China, to join the small Jesuit mission there. Following instructions to establish trust amongst the Chinese establishment, Ricci mastered the Chinese language, became a prolific writer, and was renowned as a mapmaker whose services were sought by the court. On the command of the Wanli Emperor, Zhu Yijun, (1572-1620), the fourteenth emperor of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), Matteo Ricci drew a world map, Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, 1602, depicting in great detail the entire Northern Hemisphere and placing China at the center of the world. The map measured 5.5 feet tall by 12.5 feet wide and was designed to be mounted in six panels on a folding screen.
See an interactive version HERE

Ricci described the discovery of the Americas in his notes: “In olden days, nobody had ever known that there were such places as North and South America or Magellanica (using a name that early mapmakers gave to a supposed continent including Australia, Antarctica, and Tierra del Fuego). But a hundred years ago, Europeans came sailing in their ships to parts of the sea coast, and so discovered them."

Ricci's Italian translation of ‘The Four Books’, China's classical education curriculum texts, introduced the works of Confucius to Europe. Shortly after Ricci's death, his Jesuit colleague Nicolas Trigault published a Latin translation, in 1615, De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas.

In 1953, Ricci's writings were first translated into English by Louis J. Gallagher, who informs us that Ricci saw the teaching of Confucius as "moral, rather than religious, in nature and perfectly compatible with or even complementary to Christianity".

East West fusion follows catastrophe
In the name of religion, all of Europe endured extreme conflict from early 1500s through to the 1700s: Many million perished due to warfare, famine and plague during the European wars of religion (including the Thirty Years' War, the Eighty Years' War and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms) and, the Franco-Spanish War (1635–1659), the Northern Wars, Polish–Swedish wars and Russo-Swedish Wars.

Excerpt: A short while later I stumbled across a published copy of the doctoral thesis of Han Liang Huang, published in 1918 which traced back the story of Chinese land tenure from the beginning of its history. At first glance it looked like it would provide a useful source of information to help understand the Chinese relationship with the land but his underlying thesis was also arresting. Essentially it was this: over its long history the principle source of government revenue has come directly from the land. What follows here is to quite a large extent a summary of Han Liang’s findings.
See Dr. Bowman's lecture & transcript HERE

Confucius of Europe
Francois Quesnay (1694-1774) became known as “the Confucius of Europe” during his lifetime. Professor Wei-Bin Zhang quotes Maverick (1938) in Confucianism and Modernisation (2000),

The influence of the Chinese upon the physiocrats was probably more extensive and more significant than has generally been appreciated. If one will but look into the matter, he can readily discern similarities in thought on the part of Chinese sages and French économistes…. This similarity is more than mere coincidence; it is due to an actual borrowing on the part of the physiocrats. (Zhang, 2000, p. 195)

Two essential overviews:
– Judith A. Berling, 1976, Confucianism - an essay on neo-Confucianism.
– Professor Derk Bodde, 2005, Chinese Ideas in the West, (pdf): Overview of the role Confucian philosophy played in sustaining China's imperial status-quo.

Informed by China's 4000-year history of taxing land.
Centuries of turmoil brought France to the verge of bankruptcy.
Injustice and corruption were widespread. The need to prevent anarchy and maintain social order led to new ideas in political economy, out of which emerged the "économistes": A new school of economic thought launched the first strictly scientific system of economics, preceding the Classical Political Economists in acknowledging the importance of "Land" in terms of economic significance.

Recognising France as primarily an agricultural economy, the "économistes" modelled their 'solutions' on laws of nature, which led P. S. DuPont de Nemours to coin the term
"Physiocrats" – from the Greek, rule of Nature.

The school was dominated by Royal physician and economist Francois Quesnay (1694-1774) and economist and statesman Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727–1781), later joined by economist Jacques Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay (1712-1759) and writer, economist and government official Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817) who supported the revolution and advocated for genuinely free trade, and an end to feudalism: "Physiocrats called for the abolition of all existing taxes, completely free trade and a single tax on land."
– Fonseca, Gonçalo L., (2009), "The Physiocrats" (Archived)

... there arose in France a school of philosophers and patriots– Quesnay, Turgot, Condorcet, Dupont– the most illustrious men of their time, who advocated, as the cure for all social ills, the "impot unique", the "single tax". – Henry George, 1890, Justice the Object- Taxation the Means

In 1758, Francois Quesnay wrote "Tableau Oeconomique" documenting the Physiocrats' precept: "that the wealth of nations was derived solely from the value of land agriculture or land development."

The first English translation was in 1766 described as;
THE OECONOMICAL TABLE - An Attempt Towards Ascertaining and Exhibiting the Source, Progress, and Employment of Riches, with Explanations, by the friend of Mankind, the celebrated MARQUIS de MIRABEAU
Using the paradigm of an agricultural society, the Tableau traces the flow of production in a closed system. The unfortunate references to the barren (or sterile) advances for manufacturing or commerce were later used to discredit the analysis. But whether from a misapprehension over the peculiar terminology employed or a fundamental error of the school, the profound truths of the Physiocrats have been generally ignored. Still, Adam Smith who recognized the contribution of manufacturing and commerce had this to say of the Physiocrats in his An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

"This system, however, with all its imperfections, is, perhaps, the nearest approximation to the truth that has yet been published upon the subject of political economy, and is upon that account well worth the consideration of every man who wishes to examine with attention the principles of that very important science."

Adam Smith, having studied the work of the Physiocrats extensively while residing in France, was most knowledgeable concerning the liberal, free-market orientation of the group. In the Wealth of Nations, Smith repeatedly refers to the real wealth as the annual produce of the land and labor of a society, consistent with the physiocratic emphasis upon land as the source of all wealth.>>>more: University of Buffalo, New York

In hindsight -
Scottish social philosopher and political economist, Glasgow University Professor Adam Smith (1723-1790), the reputed founder of Classical Political Economic theorem, visited the Physiocrats in France while touring across Europe (1764-1766) as tutor to the young Scottish nobleman Henry Scott, 3rd Duke of Buccleuch, who then endowed Professor Smith with a life-time 'pension'.

Ten years later, Classical Political Economic theorem was formally launched with the 1776 publication of Adam Smith's "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations"
- aka "The Wealth of Nations"
Adam Smith was inspired by the Physiocrats' economic theorem:
"the wealth of nations was derived solely from the value of land agriculture or land development."

"The rent of land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of the land, is naturally a monopoly price. It is not at all proportioned to what the landlord may have laid out upon the improvement of the land, or to what he can afford to take; but to what the [tenant] can afford to give."
– Adam Smith, 1776, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book 1, Chapter 11, Of the Rent of Land

Note: Download Free copy (pdf) of Eamonn Butler, 2011, The Condensed ‘Wealth of Nations’ from The Adam Smith Institute

Summary:
Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations is one of the most important books ever written. Smith recognised that economic specialization and cooperation was the key to improving living standards. He shattered old ways of thinking about trade, commerce and public policy, and led to the foundation of a new field of study: economics. And yet, his book is rarely read today. It is written in a dense and archaic style that is inaccessible to many modern readers. The Condensed Wealth of Nations condenses Smith’s work and explains the key concepts in The Wealth of Nations clearly. It is accessible and readable to any intelligent layman. This book also contains a primer on The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith’s other great work that explores the nature of ethics.

Excerpt from the Introduction, page 4.
...The Wealth of Nations is one of the world’s most important books. It did for economics what Newton did for physics and Darwin did for biology. It took the outdated, received wisdom about trade, commerce, and public policy, and re-stated them according to completely new principles that we still use fruitfully
today. Smith outlined the concept of gross domestic product as the measurement of national wealth; he identified the huge productivity gains made possible by specialisation; he recognised that both sides benefited from trade, not just the seller; he realised
that the market was an automatic mechanism that allocated resources with great efficiency; he understood the wide and fertile collaboration between different producers that this mechanism made possible. All these ideas remain part of the basic fabric of economic science, over two centuries later....

Why Confucian philosophy led to the European Enlightenment
"On Adam Smith and Confucius: The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Analects" (2000), by Economics Professor Dr Wei-Bin Zhang, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Japan.
See pp. 22-30 Google book scan.

Excerpt:
The Missionaries Introduce Confucius to Europe
Although the European mind was familiar with the imaginary construction of Chinese culture as early as the 13th century after Marco Polo’s expedition to China, a main step had not been taken until the 16th century when the Europeans began to rapidly expand consciousness, interest and power. ... p. 23

. . . Except for the dictatorial behaviour of the Manchu rulers, in Adam Smith’s time what Confucianism was able to offer to European philosophy had been already absorbed into Western philosophers’ rational systems. The Enlightenment originated in Paris. Confucius was a main concern of the French philosophers in the early period of the Enlightenment. Confucianism provided what Europe needed for its own mental and spiritual states. Its rational voice had been integrated into Europe by, for instance, Leibniz and Quesnay. As far as the European mind at that stage was concerned, Confucianism became almost ‘useless’ when Smith constructed his theories. (Zhang, 2000 p. 30)

"The Law of Rent Theorem"
From 1809, English Economist David Ricardo (1772-1823), defined the income derived from the ownership of land and other free gifts of nature as "The Law of Rent" aka Ricardo's Law.
Collection methods are referred to as Economic Rent | Resource Rent | Land Value Tax | Site Value Tax | "The Single Tax":
A philosophy and economic theory that follows from the belief that although everyone owns what they create, land, and everything else supplied by nature, belongs equally to all humanity.

"... without a knowledge [of The Law of Rent], it is impossible to understand the effect of the progress of wealth on profits and wages, or to trace satisfactorily the influence of taxation on different classes of the community." – David Ricardo

However, some 150 years before Ricardo, Sir William Petty (1623-1687) applied what came to be known as Ricardo’s Law of Rent as the basis for English land valuation. Famously, Sir William Petty used the principle of capitalisation of the rent of land to value England and Ireland. Australian Taxation Office (retired) land valuer and researcher Bryan Kavanagh wrote about this obscure piece of Irish history in an article published in THE AGE Newspaper in 2005: Resource rents hold the property key and, in June 2012, Bryan Kavanagh also wrote, on his blog, about William Petty's valuation of England:
WHERE IT ALL GOES HORRIBLY WRONG: Classical Days – When the role of land rent in the economy was understood.

"With no disrespect for Adam Smith, some still see Sir William Petty (1623-1687) as the father of modern economics and its first econometrician. In many respects, I think Petty was the true founder of classical economics because he had an even deeper understanding of the role (and the sheer extent) of rent within the economy than Adam Smith. Being both a valuer and an economist, he had a much broader picture of the economy than today’s superficial economists."
– Bryan Kavanagh, Land Valuer (Ret.), Australian Tax Office and various Australian banks.

Two relevant historical documents:

(i) Sir William Petty, Ireland, and the Making of a Political Economist, 1653-1687
By Adam Fox (pdf)
The importance of Sir William Petty in the history of history of economics is well established. In his principal published works of economic theory …outlined a number of theories and concepts that are now staple components of the modern discipline. >>> more

(ii) Sir William Petty, Political Anatomy of Ireland (1672):
The political anatomy of Ireland with the establishment for that kingdom when the late Duke of Ormond was Lord Lieutenant ... : to which is added Verbum sapienti, or, An account of the wealth and expences of England, and the method of raising taxes in the most equal manner ...
In the summer of 1676 Petty once more took up his residence in Ireland, where, save for visits to London in the spring of 1680, he remained almost five years. It was during this period that he wrote the “Political Anatomy of Ireland”... >>> more

A call for "free rational inquiry"!
Enlightenment:
Resilience through critical thinking;
Tolerance of varying cultural perspectives;
Thirst for knowledge through empirical evidence.

European politics, philosophy, science and communications were radically reoriented during the course of the “long 18th century” (1685-1815) as part of a movement referred to by its participants as the Age of Reason, or simply the Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinkers in Britain, in France and throughout Europe questioned traditional authority and embraced the notion that humanity could be improved through rational change. - History.com

250 years of debate
Over the last two hundred and fifty years, many legendary philosophers and economists contributed to the advancement of the French Physiocrats' ideas, now known as Classical Political Economic theorem, aka The Law of Rent Theorem:

Early contributors (from date of birth):
William Petty (1623-1687), John Locke (1632-1704), William Penn (1644-1718), Francois "laissez faire" Quesnay (1694-1774), Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Jacques Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay (1712-1759), William Blackstone (1723-1780), Adam Smith (1723-1790), Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727-1781), Thomas Paine (1737-1809), Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817), Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau (1749-1791), David Ricardo (1772-1823), John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), Edwin Burgess (1807-1869), Patrick Edward Dove (1815-1873), Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Mark Twain (1835-1910), Henry George (1839-1897), Michael Davitt (1846-1906), William Ogilvie (1846-1912), George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Alfred Deakin (1856–1919), Clarence Darrow (1857-1938), Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), Albert Jay Nock (1870-1954), Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), Winston Churchill (1874-1965), Walter Burley Griffin (1876-1937), David Lloyd George (1893-1945), Georges Duby (1919-1996), Maurice Patrick Sheehy (1928-1991) - the list goes on and on.

"Prior to the French Revolution and the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of 1791, the Concordat of 1516, signed at Bologna by Francis I and Pope Leo X, regulated Church-State relations between the Kingdom of France and the Holy See.. . . The Church in the Kingdom of France seemingly protected herself against the Pope, but only at the price of subjecting herself to the monarchy. The Gallican clergy surrendered into the King's hands at a single blow what had for so long been a matter of controversy between King and Pope."
– John W. Carven (1974), The Concordat of 1801

The French Revolution, 1789 to the Concordat of 1801, introduced various bilateral agreements regulating religio-political matters focused on abolishing the "Ancien Régime" – the hereditary monarchy and feudal system ruled by King and Pope.
John W. Carven (1974), states, "concordats have attempted to harmonize any matter on which the religio-political situation necessitated the mutual consent of the signatories. In most cases, therefore, these treaties had been negotiated in order to terminate a state of hostility between the Church and the temporal state, thereby restoring religious and/or civil peace."

The French Revolution - "Let them eat cake!"
According to Professor Jeremy D. Popkin (2006, pp. 64-68), the law of General Maximum, enacted in September 1793, fixed prices and wages, and forbade the hoarding of ”daily necessities" - including grain, which became a crime punishable by death.

The End of Feudalism via the "Single Tax"
The Fall of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, marked the real beginning of the French Revolution (5 May 1789 – 9 Nov 1799).

August 4, 1789 was The Night the Old Regime Ended feudalism, serfdom and class privileges in France:

"What began as a prearranged meeting with limited objectives suddenly took on a frenzied atmosphere during which dozens of noble deputies renounced their traditional privileges and dues. By the end of the night, the Assembly had instituted more meaningful reform than had the monarchy in decades of futile efforts."
Book Summary:
If the Fall of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, marks the symbolic beginning of the French Revolution, then August 4 is the day the Old Regime ended, for it was on that day (or, more precisely, that night) that the National Assembly met and undertook sweeping reforms that ultimately led to a complete reconstruction of the French polity. What began as a prearranged meeting with limited objectives suddenly took on a frenzied atmosphere during which dozens of noble deputies renounced their traditional privileges and dues. By the end of the night, the Assembly had instituted more meaningful reform than had the monarchy in decades of futile efforts. In The Night the Old Regime Ended, Michael Fitzsimmons offers the first full-length study in English of the night of August 4 and its importance to the French Revolution. Fitzsimmons argues against François Furet and others who maintain that the Terror was implicit in the events of 1789. To the contrary, Fitzsimmons shows that the period from 1789 to 1791 was a genuine moderate phase of the Revolution. Unlike all of its successor bodies, the National Assembly passed no punitive legislation against recalcitrant clergy or émigrés, and it amnestied all those imprisoned for political offenses before it disbanded. In the final analysis, the remarkable degree of change accomplished peacefully is what distinguishes the early period of the Revolution and gives it world-historical importance. – Michael P. Fitzsimmons, 2003, The Night the Old Regime Ended: August 4, 1789 and the French Revolution

The night a National Assembly, aka the Estates General, resolved not to repress the revolt of the peasants but to remove the causes of inequality by changing tax laws:
Aristocrats and clerics agreed to abandon their feudal rights and privileges, including tax exemption and tithe tax, bringing the feudal order to an end - a thousand years of despotic rule and fundamentalism underpinning the politics of Totalitarian theocracy.

Points of view:

Former editor at Oxford University Press, Joe McGasko shares insights on the private lives of the young royals in
"The Human Side of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette" (2017),
“to add a human dimension to our understanding of these often maligned historical figures”.

Louis XVI (1754-1793) promoted religious tolerance and wanted to end serfdom, and he supported the ideas behind the American Revolution. However, he inherited the throne unexpectedly, without training for a role based on absolute authority, thus, his efforts were blocked at every turn by divisive elites determined to maintain their own social order.

The July Monarchy (1830-1848):
"The triumph of the wealthy bourgeoisie, a return to Napoleonic influence and colonial expansion": Investigating the forces that led to the French Revolution, The Ancien Regime And The French Revolution, 1856, is the last major work of Alexis De Tocqueville, (1805-1859), the influential French political philosopher, politician, and historian who served as a member of parliament during the July Monarchy (1830-1848) and during the 1848 Revolutions across France, Germany, and Italy.

Summary: The Ancien Régime and the Revolution is a comparison of revolutionary France and the despotic rule it toppled. Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) is an objective observer of both periods – providing a merciless critique of the ancien régime, with its venality, oppression and inequality, yet acknowledging the reforms introduced under Louis XVI, and claiming that the post-Revolution state was in many ways as tyrannical as that of the King; its once lofty and egalitarian ideals corrupted and forgotten. Writing in the 1850s, Tocqueville wished to expose the return to despotism he witnessed in his own time under Napoleon III, by illuminating the grand, but ultimately doomed, call to liberty made by the French people in 1789. His eloquent and instructive study raises questions about liberty, nationalism and justice that remain urgent today. >>>more

Irish Member of the British Parliament, Edmund Burke inflamed conflict with his 1790 text, Reflections on the Revolution in France.

American Founding Father
Thomas Paine's “Rights of Man” (1791)
was written in defence of the early liberal phase of the French Revolution, in direct response to Edmund Burke’s critique.
Thomas Paine, (1737-1809), born in Norfolk, England, migrated to the British American “Thirteen Colonies” at age 37, where he became a leading political theorist and advocate for both the French and the American revolutionary movements. Paine hastily responded to turmoil in England and France with The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology (1794), for which he and his publishers were prosecuted (and jailed) for seditious and blasphemous libel.

Excerpt from the Preface:
“Rights of Man” by Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
FROM the part Mr. Burke took in the American Revolution, it was natural that I should consider him a friend to mankind; and as our acquaintance commenced on that ground, it would have been more agreeable to me to have had cause to continue in that opinion, than to change it.

At the time Mr. Burke made his violent speech last winter in the English Parliament against the French Revolution and the National Assembly, I was in Paris, and had written him, but a short time before, to inform him how prosperously matters were going on. Soon after this, I saw his advertisement of the Pamphlet he intended to publish: As the attack was to be made in a language but little studied, and less understood, in France, and as every thing suffers by translation, I promised some of the friends of the Revolution in that country, that whenever Mr. Burke’s Pamphlet came forth, I [viii] would answer it. This appeared to me the more necessary to be done, when I saw the flagrant misrepresentations which Mr. Burke’s Pamphlet contains; and that while it is an outrageous abuse on the French Revolution, and the principles of Liberty, it is an imposition on the rest of the world.

Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida, Daniel O'Neill brings valuable insights in "Edmund Burke and the Conservative Logic of Empire" (2016): "Burke adhered to a view of history as a civilizing process that stressed the fundamental importance of the landed aristocracy and organized religion for human progress and development..." p. 168. (See more excerpts here) UC Press Publisher's review states: "Burke’s defense of empire was in fact ideologically consistent with his conservative opposition to the French Revolution. … and shows that Burke’s argument …prefigured later intellectual defenses of British imperialism."

"Burke is misconstrued if viewed as mainly providing a warning about the dangers of attempting to turn utopian visions into political reality. . ." – Daniel O'Neill, (2007), The Burke-Wollstonecraft Debate – Savagery, Civilization, and Democracy.

“The Reign of Terror" (2020) by Jennifer Llewellyn and Steve Thompson offers a thoughtful overview on what went so terribly wrong in the lead-up to the “Reign of Terror” from 1793 to 1794, when the Montagnards, led by Maximilien Robespierre, acting on fear of ‘enemies of the revolution’ led to the on-going state-sanctioned terror and opportunism of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821).

According to Arthur Augustus Tilley (1851-1942), the outcome of the French Revolution (1789-1799) saw "the emancipation of the individual, in greater division of landed property, the abolition of the privileges of noble birth, the establishment of equality, the simplification of life". – Arthur Tilley, ed. (1922), Modern France: A Companion to French Studies, (Archive scan, p.115.)

The French Revolution: A History (1837), a three volume work by Scottish philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle, (available on Project Gutenberg), connects many sources of the time to chart the stages of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1795.

Marxism & Georgism are opposites

– Karl Marx (1818-1883) wanted both land and capital to become public property.
– Henry George (1839-1897) recognised private property in capital but wanted the community to recover the full value (Economic Rent aka the land, site or resource value) of all unimproved land, instead of taxing income and 'productivity profits'.

It is important to note that Karl Marx suffered over 15 months of illness before his death on 14 March 1883 (aged 64) in London, one year after Henry George's "Progress and Poverty" (1879) had reached international readership during 1881/82:

A stronger form of capitalism:
Progress toward "equality and justice for all"

As a leader of the late-1800s 'movement' toward Equality and Justice for All, San Francisco-based journalist/newspaper editor Henry George (1839-1897) popularized the Classical Political Economic Theorem with the 1879 publication of the all-time best-selling book on economics, Progress and Poverty (pdf), "a treatise on inequality, the cyclic nature of industrial economies and possible remedies"

Henry George dedicated Progress and Poverty (1879)
"To those who, seeing the vice and misery that spring from the unequal distribution of wealth and privilege, feel the possibility of a higher social state and would strive for its attainment. – San Francisco, March 1879."

In writing his book, Henry George's aim was to understand why economic growth, aka progress, always led to more entrenched poverty.

In Progress and Poverty (1879), Henry George explained how collection of Economic Rent via a "Single Tax" (aka Land or Site Value Tax, or Resource Rent) on all private use of The Commons can replace all taxes on productivity - all income, payroll, business and sales taxes.

Following the release of Progress and Poverty (1879), Henry George moved to New York where he was introduced to Michael Davitt (age 35), co-founder of the Irish National Land League, who invited Henry George to return to Ireland with him - on a year-long tour of Ireland, 1881/82, as a reporter funded by Patrick Ford (1837-1913), editor of the popular New York paper, The Irish World. Henry George's arrest by the Crown in Ireland, and the subsequent international press reports, followed by world-wide translations of Progress and Poverty (1879), catapulted Henry George onto the international stage.

"The greatest of evils and the worst of evils is poverty.
I went quite casually one night into a hall in London, and I heard a man deliver a speech which changed the whole current of my life. That man was an American, Henry George. We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it." – George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

– Progress "against monopoly in land ownership"
Advocating for the "Single Tax" solution to social problems led to the "Progressive Era" movement, from 1880s to mid-1920s. Henry George became the third most famous person in America, behind Thomas Edison and Mark Twain. George's supporters, including Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, John Dewey, Michael Davitt and Alfred Deakin, popularised the terms Georgism / Georgist

“What is not so well understood is that Marx’s vision of the impending transformation of capitalism into socialism also incorporates a process of creative destruction and supersession. Socialism is conceived and nurtured in the womb of capitalism and is its product, not merely its heir apparent.” – John E. Elliott, Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California, Marx’s Grundrisse: Vision of Capitalism’s Creative Destruction, 2015, p. 148

References:

i).
"THE scenes into which Mr. George was hurrying exceeded his fondest wishes. Next to Gladstone, he was at the moment the most talked of man in England. This was chiefly because more than forty thousand copies of the sixpenny edition of 'Progress and Poverty' had been sold."
– Henry George Jr. The Life of Henry George, British lecture campaign, CH VI, 1884

ii).
Assoc. Professor of History Edward T. O'Donnell's report, "Though Not an Irishman" - Henry George and the American Irish, The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 56, No. 4, Special Issue: Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the Death of Henry George (Oct., 1997), pp. 407-419)

iii).
When Marx Attacked The Single Tax
Darren Iversen
06/02/2019
Excerpts:

“Georgism dissolves socialism; it is pro-worker and pro-capital at the same time. This is impossible for the socialist who believes to his core that labor can only win if capital loses.”

“When Karl Marx died in 1883, there must have been dozens of Englishmen who had argued about Henry George for every one who had even heard of the Prussian Socialist.” —Roy Douglas, Land, People and Politics—The Land Question in the United Kingdom 1878-1952 (1976) (p. 48)

“George’s book, indeed, had a more dramatic effect upon British political thought than any work published during the last century. It dominated the minds of the Radical wing of the Liberal Party just as it galvanized into action those who had been groping towards a socialist commonwealth. It even achieved the undoubted feat of making Karl Marx a popular author, for chapters of Das Kapital were published and read as sequels to Progress and Poverty.” —H. Russell Tiltman, J. Ramsay Macdonald (1929) >>>more

iv).
Insights on the emerging clash between Georgist and Socialist policy:
The United Labor Party And Socialism (August 1887)

Excerpt:
An appeal which has been issued by the national executive committee of the socialistic labor party as a protest against the exclusion of their members from the united labor party clearly states the socialistic demand. “We insist,” they say, “that the burning social question is not a land tax, but the abolition of all private property in instruments of production.”
Very well, then. If the members of the socialistic labor party insist that the burning question is the abolition of private property in all “instruments of production”—by which they mean capital in all its forms—there is no place for them in the new party; either they must go out or the majority must go out, for it is certain that the majority of the men who constitute the united labor party do not propose to nationalize capital and are not in favor of the abolition of all private property in the “instruments of production.” >>> more

Free Market Holistic Thinking –
freedom from oversight and dictation
by centralist, monopolistic, authoritarian administration.
It is possible to enjoy the benefits of a genuinely FREE market as well as economic justice and ecological sustainability.

"Governments that try to control the economy ultimately enslave its people." – Austrian economist Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992)

Frederich Hayek believed that by freeing the market you could prevent power from concentrating in the hands of politicians. He argued that fascism and socialism empowered the state over the individual and that government intervention in the market, such as propping up failing businesses, setting trade tariffs, or manipulating interest rates, would be counterproductive. Hayek's bestselling book, The Road to Serfdom (1944) has been "an influential and popular exposition of market libertarianism".

Masters of Money
(2:3). Friedrich Hayek and the Free Market
BBC September 2012
Transcribed HERE

While Kaynes and Friedman, and Hayek too, were familiar with ideas around the value of Economic Rent, they made the mistake of treating "Land" as Capital.
The same can be said for Karl Marx.
But not so for Henry George.

"If you don't tax that value that attaches to land, arising from the general wealth of the economy, the banks get it." 
– Professor Michael Hudson

Christianity's Missed Opportunity
Henry George was a 40 years old journalist/newspaper editor when he self-published Progress and Poverty in 1879. In his time, Henry George became the third most famous man in the United States, behind Thomas Edison and Mark Twain, due to his success in promoting
"The Law of Rent" theorem, advocating for a more 'sustainable' tax system.

In 1891, Pope Leo XIII was forced to constrain the growing number of priests and laity supporting Henry George's work by issuing an encyclical Rerum Novarum – "of revolutionary change" or "Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor"

Mason Gaffney (1923-2020), Professor of Economics
at the University of California, Riverside from 1976 through 2012, stated in The Corruption of Economics (1994):

To most modern readers, probably George seems too minor a figure to have warranted such an extreme reaction. This impression is a measure of the neo-classicals' success: it is what they sought to make of him. It took a generation, but by 1930 they had succeeded in reducing him in the public mind. In the process of succeeding, however, they emasculated the discipline, impoverished economic thought, muddled the minds of countless students, rationalized free-riding by landowners, took dignity from labor, rationalized chronic unemployment, hobbled us with today's counterproductive tax tangle, marginalized the obvious alternative system of public finance, shattered our sense of community, subverted a rising economic democracy for the benefit of rent-takers, and led us into becoming an increasingly nasty and dangerously divided plutocracy.
>>> more

Professor Mason Gaffney's 1997 lecture, Henry George, Dr. Edward McGlynn, and Pope Leo XIII (PDF), updated in 2000, provides a thoroughly referenced report, and is a must-read for those wishing to understand the central role of the Vatican in shaping economic history.

"It was a time when Dr. Edward McGlynn, the must popular Catholic priest in NYC and the nation, could dream of modernising the American Catholic Church, leading it to shake off medieval trappings and old-world control, and leading the U.S. to genuine unity." – Mason Gaffney

On page 6, Professor Gaffney states:

"Rerum Novarum ... was a watershed document: It was a new venture into social theology. ...the first far-reaching formulation of Catholic teaching since the long Council of Trent in the middle of the 16th Century. ...refuting false modern doctrines advanced by George and [Father] McGlynn. ...championing private property in land against various attacks, real and imagined, and specifically against Georgist land taxes. It was the Catholic counterpart of the attacks on George led by sanctimonious Protestant laymen and academicians like John B. Clark and Richard T. Ely.

[Rerum's] sequel, Quadragesimo Anno, 1931, was issued by Pius XI to steer a course between socialism and laissez faire, seeking 'social justice through social action' (p. 12)

Two Schools of Economic Thought

"A closer look at what has gone on suggests that a large fraction of the increase in wealth is an increase in the value of land, not in the amount of capital goods."
– Professor Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia University, Jan. 2015

Capitalization of land is the basis of our current economic system:
Inflation followed by deflation in roughly 18-year Real Estate Boom-Bust Cycles, whereby speculators and financial institutions capitalize on property sales.

The Delusion
John Bates Clark (1847–1938) was the academic originator of the Neo-Classical Economic ''theorem' that "Land" = capital (as advanced by John Maynard Keynes):
"If nothing suppresses competition, progress will continue forever." - Clark, J. B. Essentials of Economic Theory, 1907, and, "Though the process was savage, the outlook which it afforded was not wholly evil. The survival of crude strength was, in the long run, desirable" - Clark, J.B., 1907

Two 'theorems' Compared

1. Classical Political Economics
The Law of Rent: Economic Rent, Resource Rent

Classical Political Economists developed the theorem that land is distinct from capital: "land, labor, and capital" were the three basic classical factors of production and were considered mutually exclusive.

Classical Political Economists recommend tax reform:
Collect a "Single Tax" and eliminate all other taxes.
(i) collect Economic Rent aka Resource Rent on all private access to land and natural resources.
(ii) provide a social wage or citizen dividend to all citizens.
(iii) remove all taxes on productivity – no income, business and sales taxes, etc.

"Land Value Tax is efficient because the tax reduces the price of land but does not affect how it is used, or how much is used."
– Dr. Ken Henry, Treasury Secretary (2001-2011), Australian Government.

Mason Gaffney, Professor of Economics at University of California, Riverside since 1976, co-authored (with Fred Harrison and Kris Feder) the authoritative documentation of The Corruption of Economics (1994) – a detailed history of the suppression of Classical Political Economic theorem in favour of the current neo-classical speculative system.
See excerpt here.

In The Corruption of Economics the precise manner in which Classical Political Economic theorem was 'neutralized' is clearly explained:

In short, (i) economic modelling became fundamentally corrupted via blurring of the traditional distinction between capital and land and hence between earned and unearned income, (ii) by glossing this blurred distinction with jargon and abstract models, and (iii) by recasting economics generally to make free-riding by landowners seem just and moral.

2. Neo-classical Economics
"Land" = Capital
Neoliberalism, economic rationalism, market fundamentalism, Thatcherism, Reaganism, neo-conservatism, neo-imperialism.

Neo-classical economists changed the definitions of factors of production from "land, labor and capital" to labor and capital.

Spanning The Progressive Era
Neo-classical economic theorem, which promotes real-estate
speculation and land capitalization, became popular with speculators when John Bates Clark developed The Neo-classical Economic Theorem, defining "Land" as capital - 'the capital that vests itself in land,' (Fetter, 1927). Columbia University launched the John Bates Clark Chair of Economics (J. B. Clark, Essentials of Economic Theory, 1907), celebrating Clark's 80th birthday (1927), when his son and co-author, John Maurice Bates (1884–1963), was appointed professor in 1923.

Under Professor J. B. Clark's tenure the word "Land" was printed in quotes in economics textbooks: "Land" = capital, when "Land" doesn't turn over as defined by capital production turnover. In other words, neo-classical economists advocate making profits from real-estate speculation, based on the escalation of "Land" prices in boom-bust cycles and repeated recessions.

Neo-classical economic theorem continues to be promoted by the American Economics Association which annually awards "The John Bates Clark Medal" to an economist under age 40.

References:
i) Neo-classical Economics as a Stratagem against Henry George, Mason Gaffney (1994), The Corruption of Economics. (pdf):
ii) Historical timeline Notes and References for John Bates Clark
iii) Columbia University Archival Collections: Clark, John Bates, 1847-1938
vi) John F. Henry (1995), John Bates Clark: The Making of a Neoclassical Economist
v) Bruce E. Kaufman, (2017), THE ORIGINS and THEORETICAL FOUNDATION of ORIGINAL INSTITUTIONAL ECONOMICS RECONSIDERED, Journal of the History of Economic Thought

In the interest of accurate prophecy
American libertarian author, editor of The Freeman and The Nation, Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945) believed "the pursuit of human ends can be divided into two forms: the productive or economic means, and the parasitic, political means" and,

Seeing what sort of political leadership the common man invariably chose to follow, and the kind of issue that invariably attracted him, [Henry] George ended the argument of Progress and Poverty with a clear warning, too long to be quoted here, against the wholesale corruption of the common man by the government which the common man himself sets up. It is well worth reading now, whether one finds the root of this corruption in the common man’s weakness of mind and character, or whether one finds it, as George did, in the unequal distribution of wealth. Whatever one may think about that, there is no possible doubt that George’s warning has
the interest of absolutely accurate prophecy.
– A. B. Nock, Henry George: An Essay (1939), William Morrow & Co.
(Critically reviewed by S.W. Patterson, p. 58/59)

Two historic events:
1. The founding of the Federal Reserve in 1913—
2. When elected officials bankrupted the country and gutted the US economy in the 1930s.

How did this happen?
After previous attempts to push the Federal Reserve Act through Congress, a group of bankers funded and staffed Woodrow Wilson's campaign for President. Wilson, therefore, was committed to immediately sign the Federal Reserve Act: In 1913, Senator Nelson Aldrich, maternal grandfather to the Rockefellers, pushed the Federal Reserve Act through Congress just before Christmas when much of Congress was on vacation.

President Woodrow Wilson's great sorrow
28th President of the United States, 1913 to 1921

"We are at the parting of the ways. We have, not one or two or three, but many, established and formidable monopolies in the United States. We have, not one or two, but many, fields of endeavor into which it is difficult, if not impossible, for the independent man to enter. We have restricted credit, we have restricted opportunity, we have controlled development, and we have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world–no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.
If the government is to tell big business men how to run their business, then don't you see that big business men have to get closer to the government even than they are now? Don't you see that they must capture the government, in order not to be restrained too much by it? Must capture the government? They have already captured it. Are you going to invite those inside to stay inside? They don't have to get there. They are there. ..."
– President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), 28th President of the United States, 1913 to 1921: "New Freedom: A Call for the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People" Doubleday, 1913, CH 9.
Full text available FREE @ Gutenberg.org

Note:
President Wilson's book was published the year the FED Act was signed.

"... at the bottom of every social problem we will find a social wrong."
- Henry George, Social Problems, 1883, (Ch.1/20)

Roman History & Map Source

For History students:
Imperium Romanum - The Roman Empire,
National Library of Australia

Imagining the impacts of his father-in-law,
Roman General Gnaeus Julius Agricola' conquests as Governor of the Roman province of Britannia, his son-in-law, Roman Senator Gaius Cornelius Tacitus (56-120AD), in Agricola (98AD), credited Caledonian (Scotland) Chieftain Calgacus
with the following response to upheaval
caused by the Roman Empire:
"...Out of sight of the shores of the conquered, we could keep even our eyes unpolluted by the contagion of slavery. To us who dwell on the uttermost confines of the earth and of freedom... Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace."
(complete text and reviews)
“Tacitus’ project is the problem of tyranny,
and the possibility of virtue under tyranny.”
- Stephen Sims, 2015

"Even under despotism,
it was possible to behave correctly,
avoiding the opposite extremes of servility
and useless opposition."
– Flavian Dynasty, 69-96AD, Agricola

"It used to be thought that Byzantine artists worked under a code of strict and unchanging rules; once these had been formulated, it was said, they could not be transgressed without entering the realms of heresy. This was the only kind of explanation that could account for the alleged rigidity of Byzantine art, and the supposed lack of interest of Byzantine artists in such qualities as novelty and invention, or pictorial reality an actuality. (1) As the study of Byzantine art advanced it became clear that this view of it was in most respects completely mistaken. Excepting the unique case of Byzantine artists during the period of Iconoclasm, no medieval artists were in fact subjected to directives which were as specific or controlled as those which were derived (for Western artists when treating religious subjects) from the decrees of the 16th century Council of Trent which dealt with religious art.
There was nevertheless some basis for it.
In the first place, Byzantine artists were particularly conscious of their traditions, and at different times during the course of the centuries they returned to the art of earlier periods for new stimulus. There was also the great significance accorded to the image as an object in it its own right; a Byzantine portrait contained the spirit of its subject, both for its creator and its beholder, in a way that the Western mind never fully adopted."
– Paul Hetherington, (1974), The 'Painter's Manual' of Dionysius of Fourna, excerpt from the Introduction; (review)

Liberation Theology
Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino, O.P. (born 8 June 1928 in Lima), Peruvian theologian and Dominican priest, and acclaimed author of
A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation (1973).

"Gustavo Gutiérrez shows that 'liberation theology', far from being a frivolous or irresponsible movement, arises out of deep compassion and critical reflection on the situation of the poor and oppressed. He shows how this new theology builds on, and in part surpasses, the neo-Marxism and the secularization theology of Western Europe."
– Synopsis excerpt, 1983 edition.

NOTES FOR A THEOLOGY OF LIBERATION (pdf), by Gustavo Gutiérrez.
Excerpt: To get at the theological meaning of liberation, we first have to define our terms. That will make up the first part of this article. It will permit us to emphasize that in these pages we are particularly sensitive to the critical function of theology regarding the Church's presence and activity in the world. The principal fact about that presence today, especially in underdeveloped countries, is the participation by Christians in the struggle to construct a just and fraternal society in which men can live in dignity and be masters of their own destinies. We think that the word "development" does not well express those profound aspirations. "Liberation" seems more exact and richer in overtones; besides, it opens up a more fertile field for theological reflection.
. . .
Through the Church's history, theology has carried out various functions. Two stand out in particular. In the first centuries, what we today call theology was closely allied to the spiritual life. Primarily it dealt with a meditation on the Bible, geared toward spiritual progress. From the twelfth century on, theology began to be a science. The Aristotelian categories made it possible to speak of theology as a "subordinate science." This notion of science is ambiguous and does not satisfy the modern mind. But the essential in the work of St. Thomas is that theology is the fruit of the meeting between faith and reason. Perhaps we do better, then, to speak of a rational knowledge. In résumé, theology is necessarily spiritual and rational knowledge. These two elements are permanent and indispensable functions of all theological reflection. Another function of theology has slowly developed and been accepted in recent years: theology as a critical reflection on the Church's pastoral action. >>> more

See also the review by Angus Brook,
University of Notre Dame Australia
Towards a Theology of Liberation (pdf)

Conceptualizing
and Measuring
Economic Resilience
Professor Lino Briguglio (2006)
Islands and Small States Institute,
University of Malta.
"The working definition of economic resilience adopted in this paper is the “nurtured” ability of an economy to recover from or adjust to the effects of adverse shocks to which it may be
inherently exposed. "
Download PDF here

MONOPOLY
"The Landlord's Game"
- the precursor to Monopoly, was invented by American game designer, writer and feminist Lizzie Magie (1866–1948), (Elizabeth J. Magie Phillips), as a teaching tool, played with reverse rules, to illustrate teachings of the Progressive Era economist Henry George.

In 1902 to 1903, Magie designed the game ...to be a "practical demonstration of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences".
In 1904, the Game of Monopoly was patented.

Reviews:
#1. The Fanatic Feminist Who Created ‘Monopoly’ (2015) by William O’Connor
#2. The Monopolists, 2015, by Mary PIlon

"It's an American classic: each new generation of Monopoly players learns to love (harmlessly) indulging its cutthroat, ruthless, greedy impulses. Players begin the game as equals. Luck – and a bit of strategy – eventually enables one player to dominate all others." - Edward J. Dobson, 2011
Source: The History of The Landlord's Game

The Original Monopoly
was Deeply Anti-Landlord
By Tristan Dnovan
May 24, 2017
The game of cutthroat capitalism was actually intended as a lesson on wealth inequality. >>> more

Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism
BBC, 29 July 2017
"So next time someone invites you to join a game of Monopoly, here’s a thought. As you set out piles for the Chance and Community Chest cards, establish a third pile for Land-Value Tax, to which every property owner must contribute each time they charge rent to a fellow player." – Kate Raworth,
Oxford and Cambridge economist and the author of Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist, 2017.

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my church." and "My country is the world and my religion is to do good."
– American Founding Father, Thomas Paine (1737-1809), The Age of Reason (1794),
"a series of influential pamphlets written by Thomas Paine throughout the 1790s and into the early 1800s, written and published in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1807. His work attacked the church as being corrupt and too institutionalized." - Samuel Tuschman and Nate Sullivan, 2023, The Age of Reason Lessons, Study.com

Agrarian Justice, (1797) 
by Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
is considered one of the earliest proposals for a social security system in the United States, it included, for the first time, the provision of an equal cash endowment to all young adults.
Paine stated,
"Men did not make the earth…
It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property…
Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds....
“Cultivation is at least one of the greatest natural improvements ever made by human invention. It has given to created earth a tenfold value. But the landed monopoly that began with it has produced the greatest evil. It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance, without providing for them, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss, and has thereby created a species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before.
In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right, and not a charity, that I am pleading for. But it is that kind of right which, being neglected at first, could not be brought forward afterwards till heaven had opened the way by a revolution in the system of government. Let us then do honor to revolutions by justice, and give currency to their principles by blessings.
Having thus in a few words, opened the merits of the case, I shall now proceed to the plan I have to propose, which is,
To create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty- one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property: And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.”
-Thomas Paine Agrarian Justice, (1797)

"In an agrarian setting, Paine thought the obligation of the individual to the society for the use of land would off-set the cost of improvement… exclusion of the vast majority of citizens from property rights required the State to provide minimal assets to facilitate subsistence livelihood."
– Pleaser & Lødemel, 2020, CUP

"Jeffersonian Democracy”
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
3rd US President - 1801-1809

Roger Williams (1603-1683), ”portrayed by biographers as a harbinger of Jeffersonian Democracy”, established “a haven for religious minorities” in Providence, Rhode Island, based on principles of separation of church and state. A century later, Williams’ concept of a “wall of separation” between church and state was incorporated it into the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. >>>more

Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government
50: Property Rights
50.1 The Origin of Ownership
"It is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all... It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society." - Thomas Jefferson: Isaac McPherson, 1813. ME 13:333

"A right of property in moveable things is admitted before the establishment of government. A separate property in lands, not till after that establishment. The right to moveables is acknowledged by all the hordes of Indians surrounding us. Yet by no one of them has a separate property in lands been yielded to individuals. He who plants a field keeps possession till he has gathered the produce, after which one has as good a right as another to occupy it. Government must be established and laws provided, before lands can be separately appropriated, and their owner protected in his possession. Till then, the property is in the body of the nation, and they, or their chief as trustee, must grant them to individuals, and determine the conditions of the grant." - Thomas Jefferson: Batture at New Orleans, 1812. ME 18:45

"Georgism"
Progressive Era economist Henry George (1839-1897).

"... Seeing what sort of political leadership the common man invariably chose to follow, and the kind of issue that invariably attracted him, [George] ended the argument of Progress and Poverty with a clear warning, too long to be quoted here, against the wholesale corruption of the common man by the government which the common man himself sets up. It is well worth reading now, whether one finds the root of this corruption in the common man’s weakness of mind and character, or whether one finds it, as George did, in the unequal distribution of wealth. Whatever one may think about that, there is no possible doubt that George’s warning has the interest of absolutely accurate prophecy."
– A.B.Nock: 1939 essay on Henry George

"I said to myself, there must be some reason for this; there must be some remedy for this, and I will not rest until I have found the one and discovered the other. At last it came clear as the stars of a bright midnight. I saw what was the cause; I saw what was the cure. I saw nothing that was new."
– Henry George, 1890,
Justice the Object- Taxation the Means, San Francisco